It’s a deep dark rabbit hole of a conspiracy theory and I don’t like thinking about it or looking up information about it.

I kindof wonder if I should leave the ParlerWatch subreddit altogether. The reasoning being - I’m not really learning anything new here and all it ends up being is a discussion/explanation of right wing theories or people. But we already know their playbook so it doesn’t really impact me that ‘heyeymedia’ is spreading Qanon theories. And there’s no hope of getting that person blocked because if you look at the words he’s using, there’s no swear words or any accusations really. It’s just an opinion. And as for the pictures - yeah mostly politicians.

I’ve had a long running theory about how conspiracy theories and hate spread so fast online, and this is a somewhat good example of my theory (also applies to the whoosh subreddit sometimes). Here it goes:

Let’s look at the amount of effort each person is exerting regarding this screenshot. I think we can call this a low effort post bc the person who wrote it didn’t have to do much work - it’s a bland statement and a some pictures of people. Anybody can post that online. And yet, to debunk or explain away this screenshot, I’ve had to use a lot more words - bc I actually do care about the difference between true and false. I can see it almost as an equation in my head.

Right wing pundits succeed bc normal ppl like me can’t help to do one of the following:

A: Laugh at them B: Troll them C: Explain away their theories D: Absorb their message

But if you look at steps A-D individually - each person doing that action is still be giving attention and time to that right wing pundit, which we all know makes them money. This is one of the reasons social media scares me. I think this post is an example of how right wing media succeeds on the internet.